Measuring HR impact
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7 min read
Key findings
A rate that counts moves and not people overstates mobility whenever the same people move more than once.
Published internal fill figures use different bases, so a company figure needs its roles, period and entry-level treatment stated.
BambooHR reported internal moves at 62 per cent of all fills in 2025, while Workday reported internal hiring down 8 per cent.
Movers are not a random group, so retention is compared against stayers matched on grade, function and tenure.
A manager view needs a minimum group size, and the first report shows patterns without names.
A person who changes role twice in a year counts as one person and two moves.
Internal mobility is measured with seven numbers built from the HR system and the requisition log. They are mobility rate and internal fill rate. The others are the promotion and lateral split, time in role, retention of movers, performance after the move and moves by manager. Each depends on a written definition of a move.
Most reports stop at one percentage. Two companies can publish the same percentage while counting different things.
The measures below need no talent marketplace and use records that most HR teams already hold.
Together they make a one-page report for the business head. Each number carries its evidence.
Defining A Move
Every other number depends on what counts as a move.
A promotion, a lateral transfer, a transfer to another country and a six-month secondment are four different events. Companies count them differently.
Write the definition as a list before anything is calculated.
Permanent promotion to a higher grade
Permanent lateral move to a different role
Transfer between countries or legal entities
Secondment of six months or more, reported separately
Count people in the headline rate, and keep moves as a second figure.
A person who changes role twice in a year counts as one person and two moves.
Take a hypothetical company with 1,200 people on average and 84 moves made by 78 of them.
Its mobility rate is 6.5 per cent by people and 7.0 per cent by moves.
The gap widens when one team reshuffles the same people repeatedly, which is itself worth seeing.
One vendor guide defines the rate as employees who changed roles. Its example uses 140 moves against a headcount of 2,000, so it mixes the two counts.
Internal Fill Rate
Internal fill rate is the number of roles filled by existing employees divided by all roles filled in the period.
The denominator needs a decision, and published figures differ partly because it is set differently.
BambooHR reported in April 2026 that internal moves made up 62 per cent of all fills in 2025. The share was 51 per cent in 2021.
The figure comes from its platform data for January 2020 to March 2026, with about 6.5 million completed hires.
The page does not define a fill or give the number of companies.
Workday reported in September 2025 that internal hiring had fallen 8 per cent. Promotions were down in 10 of 11 industries.
That release draws on two July 2025 surveys by Hanover Research and on Workday customer data. One survey covered 1,700 business leaders. The release does not state the comparison period.
Both statements can be true at once, since a share rises when external hiring falls faster than internal hiring.
A company figure needs three things written beside it. They are the roles counted, the period and the treatment of entry-level roles.
Take a hypothetical year in which 46 roles were filled and 15 went to existing employees.
The rate is 33 per cent. Without 12 graduate roles that are filled externally by design, it is 15 of 34, or 44 per cent.
Report both, with the exclusion stated. Count a role on the day the person starts and not on the day the requisition closes.
Promotion And Lateral Split
People Analytics 101 lists the promotion rate and the internal mobility rate as separate measures. The first counts moves into higher-level positions. The second counts lateral and upward moves.
Report them separately. A mobility rate made of promotions describes a different organisation from one made of lateral moves.
Falling promotions with steady lateral moves suggest that progression in grade has stalled. The business still moves people sideways.
Show the split by job family and grade band, since a company average hides the bands in which nobody moves.
Time In Role
Time in role is the median number of months in the current role. Calculate it for people who moved and for people who stayed.
Use the median, because a few long-tenured people distort the mean.
The second figure is the useful one, since it shows the job families in which people wait.
No published benchmark with a stated base was found. One vendor guide gives 3.5 years as a sign of a clogged pipeline, without a source.
A comparison across the company’s own job families is more reliable than that threshold.
A share rises when external hiring falls faster than internal hiring.
Retention Of Movers
The measure with the most outside evidence is whether people who move stay longer.
SHRM reported in March 2020 on LinkedIn data. It covered about 32 million profiles of active users who had worked at companies with more than 500 employees since 2013.
Retention was 76 per cent at one year overall.
It was 70 per cent for people promoted within three years and 62 per cent for lateral movers. It was 45 per cent for people with no promotion or internal move.
The article does not give the time point for the last three figures. It is a secondary report, so it indicates direction and sets no benchmark.
People who move are not a random group. Managers tend to move people they value, so part of any gap is selection.
A fairer comparison matches each mover to a stayer of the same grade, function and tenure band. Follow both for 24 months.
In a hypothetical case, 48 of 60 movers are still employed at 24 months, which is 80 per cent. For 60 matched stayers the count is 42, or 70 per cent.
The gap is ten points and six people. Show the counts beside the percentages, because one resignation changes the result.
Leaver records complete the picture when they show whether the person applied internally first, as covered in exit interviews worth reading.
Performance After The Move
A move that ends in weak performance or an early return is a cost the rate does not show.
Compare ratings twelve months after the move for internal movers and for external hires into similar roles. One Model also lists this comparison.
Hagerman, Christiansen and Stein argue in the ATD Talent Management Handbook that internal transfers need a designed arrival.
A move often goes live the moment it is announced, with no break between the old job and the new one.
A weak twelve-month result may therefore reflect missing support and not a poor choice.
Record the handover period and the named support for each move, or the measure cannot separate the two.
Moves By Manager
The manager view shows where moves are blocked.
For each manager, count the people who moved to another team in two years and the people who left the company.
A manager with several leavers and no movers is the pattern described in internal mobility and the hoarding manager.
Apply a minimum group size, for example eight people over the period, and report no manager below it.
Show the pattern across managers in the first report. Keep names for a private conversation with the business head.
Common Distortions
Five errors recur in mobility reports, and each can be checked before the report goes out.
Counting moves as people, which inflates the rate
Counting a closed requisition as a fill
Mixing secondments with permanent moves
Comparing movers with all stayers and not matched ones
Reporting a manager with too few people to compare
The first two are definitions and are settled in the footnote.
The third is settled by reporting secondments on their own line.
The last two need the matched comparison and the minimum group size described above.
A report that corrects all five can show a lower rate than the first draft. That lower figure is the one to give the business head.
Data Already Held
All seven measures can be calculated from four records.
Job history from the HR system with effective dates
The requisition log with start dates and source of hire
Leaver records with reason and last role
Performance ratings for the year after each move
Where the HR system holds only the current job, the first cycle rebuilds history from transfer and promotion letters. The rates wait a year.
A spreadsheet with one row per person per role is enough, and people analytics without a data team sets out how to keep it.
The One-Page Report
The report for the business head fits on one page.
Mobility rate by people, with the count of moves
Internal fill rate, with its roles and period
Promotions and lateral moves by job family
Retention of movers against matched stayers, with counts
Job families with the longest median time in role
Put the definition of a move in a footnote and counts beside every percentage.
End the report with a decision. For example, name the job families that get a pathway or the roles that open to internal applicants first.
Job rotation is one way to act on the answer, as set out in job rotation to close talent gaps.
Set targets after two reporting cycles, with the business head. No research-based standard was found, and the public figures use different bases.
Where The Tools Sit
The Trusted Talent Advisor system from Talentient has seven components and 51 tools for the adviser’s work with the business, listed on the Talentient home page.
Sources
1. BambooHR. More Applicants, Fewer Hires: New Data Explains the 2026 Hiring Slowdown (State of Hiring 2026, 2 April 2026). BambooHR.
2. Workday. New Workday Global Research: Stalled Career Growth Is Driving Top Talent to Quit (press release, 9 September 2025). Workday.
3. SHRM. Study: Internal Mobility Boosts Retention (15 March 2020). Society for Human Resource Management.
4. Hagerman, S., Christiansen, L. and Stein, M. Designing Inboarding (Onboarding for Internal Transfers), in Bickham, T. (ed.), ATD Talent Management Handbook. ATD Press.
5. Kogan Page Editorial. People Analytics 101. Kogan Page.
6. One Model. What Is Internal Mobility? One Model.
From the system
Trusted Talent Advisor sets out the full method: seven components, 51 tools, The Talent Template Pack and The Prompt Library.
See the system
Questions this answers
How do you calculate internal mobility rate?
Divide the number of people who changed role internally in a period by average headcount, then multiply by 100. Count people and moves separately, and write down which events count as a move before the first calculation.
What is internal fill rate?
Internal fill rate is the number of roles filled by existing employees divided by all roles filled in the period. State the roles counted and whether entry-level roles are included, since the denominator changes the result.
What is a good internal mobility rate?
No research-based standard was found. BambooHR reported 62 per cent of fills going to internal moves in 2025, but that is a share of fills and not a rate on headcount. Set targets by job family after two cycles.
Does internal mobility improve retention?
LinkedIn data reported by SHRM in 2020 showed higher retention for promoted and lateral movers than for people who did not move. Movers are selected, so compare against matched stayers in your own company.
How do you track internal mobility without HR software?
Keep a spreadsheet with one row per person per role, with effective dates, the move type and the source of hire. Add leaver records and the requisition log, and all seven measures can be calculated from it.
What metrics measure internal mobility?
The core set is mobility rate, internal fill rate, promotion and lateral split, time in role, retention of movers, performance after the move and moves by manager. Report counts beside percentages.
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